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Thursday, 28 January 2016

There’s been some
controversy regarding information released on the new regional
occupation system of the upcoming Total War: Warhammer. You can read
the official developer post about it here. But as a long term fan of
this series, I thought I’d share my own thoughts -

The game I’m most
interested in playing this year has to be Total War: Warhammer. I’ve
been a fan of the Total War series since the release of the original Shogun,
but as much as I’ve enjoyed the historical based titles, I’ve
always wanted to see the release of a fantasy based variation.

But I’m more than just
interested in this upcoming title for its fantasy world and
characters. I’m also interested to see how this game can shake up
the franchise and provide a unique and fresh Total War experience.

Because in many ways, I’ve
grown rather weary of what many view as the ‘traditional’ nature
of Total War. It’s probably why I’ve enjoyed the smaller, yet
more focused experiences of expansion titles such as Napoleon, Fall
of the Samurai and Attila, to the larger, more expansive core titles.

These titles may not have
offered the scope or variety of Empire, Shogun 2 or Rome 2, but they
all introduced new dynamics and features to the campaign which, for
me at least, provided a more engaging experience.

For me, the Total War
‘formula’ was only
about the combination of turn based and real time strategy. The
ability to see the translation of the campaign map to the battle map.
I never viewed the ability to conquer every region upon the map as a
core component to the series because in the 15 years I’ve been
paying these games, I’ve never actually done so!

I’d imagine many fans of
this series would agree that Total War has always had issues with
long term campaign engagement. In other words, the beginning of a
campaign is always more interesting than the end. Attempts to combat
this issue in the past have been met with mixed results – the Realm
Divide of Shogun 2, the Civil War of Rome 2, or the Hun invasion of
Attila.

The problem is simple –
50 to 100 turns into a typical Total War campaign, a player is often
so powerful and wealthy that conquering the rest of the map is
inevitable – victory all but guaranteed. The loss of an army or
region is but a minor set-back. There remains little to no risk to
the player or their empire, and the chance of failure – the chance
to lose
– is all but non-existent. Which is why I’ve never conquered the
entire campaign map in any of the Total War titles. Because beyond a
certain point, there’s no more challenge to your expansion.

The problem is simple
enough, so is the solution, equally simple? If the player is growing
too powerful, too quickly, then why not restrict how powerful the
player can grow? Why not place limitations upon the player to prevent
them from ever reaching that tipping point where a campaign ceases to
be an engaging challenge, and instead becomes an inevitable chore?

It doesn’t seem like such
a radical notion, but in terms of Total War, it’s quite a
fundamental departure from the traditional campaign formula of the
series. And that’s why, with the announcement of regional
occupation restrictions in Total War: Warhammer, it’s caused quite
the stir within the community.

In the development post,
there’s various discussions about how the team came to this
decision, including discussion regarding Warhammer lore. I won’t
discuss Warhammer lore here because as I’m sure I’ve mentioned in
the past, I know practically sod all about the licence. I’m looking
at this purely from the perspective of campaign gameplay.

In other words, I really
couldn’t give a f**k if it’s consistent with Warhammer lore or
not. My only interest is this – will this new system solve the
issue of long term campaign engagement? Will this provide a unique
and fresh Total War experience? I honestly can’t say. Nobody can,
not without playing it. But we can sure have a swell time debating
the matter!

As I normally do, I’ll
adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach to this new system. I don’t
believe doing something different is doing something wrong. Certainly
there’s truth in the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke’, but I
feel it’s time for Total War to take a risk and fundamentally shake
up its core gameplay. That said, this wouldn’t be the first time
Total War has done so.

In many ways it’s not a
surprise that Total War: Warhammer is changing aspects to the Total
War ‘formula’ because the series has done so, to one degree or
another, with nearly every major release. The transition from the 2D
campaign of Shogun 1 to the 3D campaign of Rome 1 was a fundamental
shift in how Total War was played, and was also considered quite
controversial at the time by many players.

The introduction of gun
line warfare in Empire was a major shift in how a player would
approach the real time battles. Shogun 2 introduced more major
changes, particularly with region development. In previous titles,
settlements could be constructed as the player saw fit, but Shogun 2
introduced restrictions on what could be built and where, in addition
to limiting building slots per region.

At the time, this change,
much like the recent announcement of occupation restrictions, was met
with controversy, a concern that the developers were ‘taking away’
options from the player. I’m sure many still feel this way. But
personally, I loved the transition to a restricted building system,
because it fixed another issue I had with previous games in the
series.

In Rome 1, for example, it
was possible to turn nearly every settlement into an economic and
military powerhouse. Losing a region had little to no impact on your
economy or ability to train new forces. But in Shogun 2, the
restrictions in place forced the player to consider very carefully how
each settlement should be constructed. Should it focus on economy or
military? And losing a region, such as a region with a valuable
resource, was far more of a concern, even as the campaign progressed.

It’s
a great example of how artificial restrictions placed upon the player
resulted in far more strategically important choices. And
restrictions on regional occupation feels like a natural progression
of this system. In the development post, Game Director Ian Roxburgh
argues - ‘Simply
painting the map your colour is not always a route to victory, and is
arguably the least strategically interesting.’
And I agree, as this has proven true throughout the entire series.

One
of the things I enjoyed most about the recent Age of Charlemagne DLC
was the introduction of new victory conditions tied to imperium,
rather than simply taking ‘X number of regions’. With the
addition of new technology and building chains to support this
system, it was possible to approach and complete a campaign in a
variety of ways, not necessarily through war and war alone.

Obviously,
war will play a key role in Total War: Warhammer, but with the
introduction of unique characters, quest chains and likely race
specific victory conditions, I’m hopeful that we’ll have a far
more dynamic and strategically interesting campaign than simply ‘take
X number of regions to win’.

Continuing
our discussion of how the Total War series has evolved, Rome 2
provides another great shift, with the introduction of the regional
province system, a new army recruitment system, army legacy and
campaign ‘stances’, battle map capture points, and an entirely
new (if somewhat broken) political system. It also introduced a
controversial new system of its own – agent and army limitations.
But like the settlement building restrictions of Shogun 2, I’d
argue this new system didn’t ‘limit’ the experience, but
instead forced the player into making more important strategic
choices regarding when and where to strike.

Total
War: Attila refined, expanded and improved upon many of these systems
whilst also introducing new dynamics of its own, particularly the
‘horde’ and ‘raze’ mechanics. There were many
who were wary of the horde system but it proved to introduce an
entirely new way to play and approach a Total War campaign. And when
playing as the Huns, you couldn’t conquer any
regions, yet such a restriction introduced a unique and fresh
gameplay experience. The ‘raze’ system, though not particularly
well balanced upon release, also introduced a new dynamic and
strategic option to the campaign.

The
point I suppose I’m trying to make is that beyond the combination
of turn based and real time strategy, there’s never been a
consistent or core ‘formula’ to the Total War series. Nearly
every game has, for good or for ill, changed, chopped, cut and added
features in an attempt to provide a unique experience.

And
I must give it credit for that, even if the changes it’s made haven’t
always been to my personal tastes. It takes balls for a developer to
take risks with an established formula, particularly in a series as
long running as Total War. And yet, that’s what the developers have
done with nearly every major release. It’s a risk, because as much
as change and innovation is desired, it is also feared.

But
fearing change can also lead to stagnation, to the repetition of a
tired formula and the loss of interest in a series. I think it’s a
great testament to the series when, at the time of writing, there are
five
Total War games in the Top Games list on Steam by current player
count. It’s why, when you ask what people’s favourite Total War
game is, that you’ll get such a mix of responses stretching to
every title in the series.

Because
each entry in the series is unique in its own way, due the changes to
its formula. And Total War: Warhammer is set to continue this trend.
I can’t say I’m in favour of, or approve of the changes in this
upcoming title until I’ve played it for myself, but I am
in favour of change, because I feel that change, on the whole, has
benefited the series rather than harmed it.

And
that’s why I’m willing to keep an open mind about the new region
occupation system. Do I share concerns regarding replayability?
Regarding the possibility of a more ‘rail road’ experience? Of
course! But I’m also interested to see if this system does provide
a fresh Total War experience. I feel that many of the controversial
‘restrictions’ that have been incorporated into the series down
the years have enhanced the campaign rather than detracted from it.
And I hope this new system does the same.

How?
Well, previously, despite alternative options, occupying a region was
always the best long term choice. There was no downside to doing so –
you gain new land, a new source of income and a new foothold from
which you can expand your empire. As a result, campaigns often
followed a repetitive pattern of expand, conquer, replenish and
repeat.

The
new system of regional restrictions may change this in two positive
ways. The first, as I’ve already discussed, is that it will serve
to limit player power and prevent the player from ever growing so
powerful that mid to end game conquest is no more than a tedious and
inevitable chore.

The
second, is that the new system will force the player into making
different strategic decisions regarding particular regions. Even with
multiple options available in previous games, occupying a region was
always the best long term option. By taking that option away, the
player will be forced to consider the alternatives.

This
system will also undoubtedly influence how you advance into certain
territory. Without being able to capture a string of settlements on
the way, your armies will be all the more vulnerable the further they
advance from your borders. The player won’t have the safety net of
retreating to a friendly nearby settlement. They’ll have to
consider very carefully how far they’re willing to push their
forces into hostile territory.

Of
course now, I’m simply speculating. I don’t really know how this
new system will work in practice. But I see potential here, so I’m
keeping an open mind. I want mid to late game campaigns to remain
fresh, exciting and challenging. And maybe this new system will
provide that. All we can do now is wait and see.

Tuesday, 26 January 2016

Deserts of Kharak began
life as a ‘spiritual prequel’ to the Homeworld series by the name
of Hardware: Shipbreakers. It was a game I intended to keep an eye
on, at least until Gearbox bought the rights to the Homeworld licence
and news about Hardware fell dark. But a year or so later, Hardware
reappeared, retitled as Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.

Which is great! Because
it’s a new, now ‘official’ Homeworld game. A new
Homeworld game. That’s something I thought I’d never get to say.
I’ve seen some people say it can’t be a ‘proper’ Homeworld
game because it’s not set in space. But we’ll ignore those people
because they’re dumb. Space or not, Deserts of Kharak is
a Homeworld game. And I really couldn’t be happier.

So what makes a Homeworld
game so special? For me, it’s all about the story and the tone.
Homeworld was always about a journey. A great quest. And that’s
what DoK is all about. It’s a prequel to the original game, telling
the story of a dying world and a final, desperate mission to save its
people. All the HW games had this wonderfully haunting theme of
desolation and survival, which is something DoK captures perfectly.

The story is told across a
thirteen mission single player campaign. It was the campaign of DoK
that I was most interested in. I know there are many people who love
the HW games for their skirmish/MP aspects as much, if not more than,
the story driven campaigns, but for me, the campaigns were what made
me fall in love with the series. And getting to return to this
universe, with such a rich history and lore, is fantastic.

Deserts of Kharak also
captures that classic Homeworld vibe through its visuals and sound.
The look and design of the units is perfect, with a lovely attention
to detail, especially in terms of unit animations. But it’s the
audio where DoK really shines. The soundtrack is fantastic, and the
VA work is of a high quality.

The unit chatter is great,
with fun little conversations playing out between combat. I’ve said
before how I feel it’s important for an RTS to have ‘personality’
for its units, connecting them to the player. This is something DoK
does very well, if not in some ways better than the original
Homeworld games. Also good is the battle/unit sounds, with satisfying
weapon, engine and explosion effects. All the audio work in DoK is
superb.

Although set entirely in a
desert, the maps of the campaign are fairly diverse and mix things up
quite nicely, with missions set in canyons, during storms, at night
etc. Although some texture work can be a little low quality here and
there, graphically, DoK is a great looking game. And as for technical
performance, overall, it’s pretty good, although there are odd
times when the FPS noticeably drops for no obvious reason.

The campaign was a lot of
fun, and certainly something I’ll be playing through again. That
said, I do have a few issues with it. The first is simply that it’s
rather short. Even playing on the hardest ‘classic’ difficulty, I
breezed through the campaign in about 8 hours, and that was even when
I was taking my time. The final mission is also a little lacklustre,
followed by a rather abrupt cinematic.

Speaking of difficulty, I
also never needed to restart a mission because the campaign,
honestly, isn’t particularly challenging. A part of this issue is
due to the way mission triggers are too obviously signposted,
allowing you to prepare for the next ‘stage’ of a mission for as
long as you’d like.

My only other issue with
the campaign is how it never really mixes up your enemies. There’s
no missions where you have to combat a new threat. It’s always you
versus the same bad guys. There’s no ‘third’ faction for you to
contend with, even for a single mission, and this does harm the
campaign in terms of variety.

The UI of DoK is very
Homeworld, with a tactical sensor overlay and a movement disc to
highlight terrain height. Because terrain plays a key role in DoK. As
an RTS, DoK is a very solid and enjoyable title. It doesn’t stray
too far from the formula you’d expect, but it does add a few neat
little dynamics to its gameplay. The first, as I’ve mentioned, is
terrain, with high ground providing a useful bonus. Line of sight is
equally important, as units can’t hit what they can’t see.

The unit roster is quite
small, which may disappoint some, but every unit fulfils a very
specific role and many have multiple special abilities. Units also
rank up and carry between missions, meaning it’s important to try
to keep them alive. I love the mobile ‘mothership’ which serves
as a giant, sand crawling aircraft carrier. That said, it could
really use more aircraft landing pads, because once you have several
squadrons on the go, it’s a nightmare bringing them all in to dock.

As you would expect in an
RTS, you’ll be harvesting resources, building units and researching
upgrades to smash your enemy. It’s not the most complex game in
terms of strategy, even with the addition of the line of sight and
terrain systems – ultimately it’s still a game of hitting your
enemy with superior numbers.

Overall though, despite my
few issues with it and its relatively short length, I really liked
the campaign a lot. The developers have done a fantastic job of
transitioning the Homeworld experience from space down onto the
ground, and I have to give them credit for that. But what does DoK
offer beyond its good, but somewhat limited campaign? Sadly, not very
much.

There’s a skirmish mode,
as you’d expect, but it provides barely any customisation options
in terms of match set ups. It’s a fun mode, nonetheless, but it’s
also a mode which really highlights the flaws in the game AI. The
campaign disguises these flaws quite effectively but in skirmish,
with the AI on equal footing to the player, it’s way too easy to
beat. That’s not to say the AI can’t surprise you, but it’s
something they really need to improve. To make skirmish even more
limited is the lack of maps. There’s only five. But they have said
more maps will be released for free, which is nice.

Skirmish mode is really
meant to be the warm up for the MP though. Unfortunately, from what
few games I’ve played of the MP, DoK is the type of RTS I can’t
say I really enjoy playing online. It’s very much of the ‘spam
and rush’ type gameplay, where it’s all about employing an
‘efficient’ build order and then hitting your opponent as quickly
as possible.

This makes games,
especially the 1v1 mode, very dull to play, because people just end
up repeating the same tactics every match. In fact, there’s already
a popular rush strategy which I’ve encountered in nearly every 1v1
I’ve fought. I can’t blame people for using it. It’s fast,
efficient and it works, but boy does it make playing 1v1 a tedious
experience.

I know some people enjoy this style
of play, and I really don’t have an issue with rush style
strategies, but there needs to be a balance. A certain risk/reward.
That balance doesn’t exist right now, so if you don’t roll with
the most popular strategy, you’re kind of screwing yourself. And
I hate feeling forced into playing in a very specific way. That
really kills the experience for me.

I was hoping the ‘artifact
retrieval’ game would introduce a different dynamic to the MP. The
idea is to retrieve more artifacts than your opponent within the time
limit. It’s a really good concept for a mode, with the potential
for a lot of back and forth power struggles across the map. In
concept.
In reality, the mode is totally f**ked.

Because despite the
objective, you can still win the game simply by destroying the enemy
carrier. And so, people just ignore the artifacts and spam and rush.
If they actually tied victory conditions to the artifact retrieval
count, then I think you’d have something quite enjoyable and fun, a
mode that required more thought and long term strategy. But as it
exists right now, you can just ignore the artifacts and rush your
opponent’s carrier to win, making the entire mode utterly
pointless.

Of course, playing MP, at
least at the time of writing, is a bloody nightmare anyway. It seems
to be region locked, so trying to find a game takes forever,
particularly in the team modes. It might be that the rush strategies
of 1v1 aren’t quite so prevalent in the 2v2 or 3v3 matches, but I
wouldn’t know, because I’ve never been able to find a game using
the auto-match system.

I have played a few team
games by joining public matches, but even these are thin on the
ground, with only one or two on the go at a time. They really need to
remove whatever restrictions they have in place on the auto-match
system or the MP for DoK is going to be dead before it’s even
begun.

Another annoyance, which
applies to both SP and MP is the zoom range. I’d love to be able to
zoom out more without relying on the sensor view. Also, it’s not
possible to rebind keys and I can’t stress how much this f**king
irritated me. I got used to the default keys over time, but I really
wanted to set up my own configuration, especially for camera controls
and unit hot keys.

I should probably wrap this
up. Deserts of Kharak is worthy of the Homeworld name. It’s a great
prequel and hopefully a step towards a new, space set, Homeworld 3.
The campaign, despite a few issues, is very good. But the skirmish
and MP modes are pretty weak and shoddy to say the least, although
both of these may improve over time if properly supported.

If you’re like me, and
you just want a new Homeworld campaign set in this rich and
fascinating universe, then I don’t think you’ll be disappointed
with Deserts of Kharak. But if you’re expecting more from it than
that then I probably wouldn’t recommend it, not in its current
state or price. That said, it’s a new Homeworld game. A new
Homeworld game. And that’s good enough for me.

Sunday, 24 January 2016

Sunday, 17 January 2016

The
Last Roman is a mini-expansion to Total War: Attila. Compared to the
recently released Age of Charlemagne, this DLC is a far smaller and
limited piece of content. It revolves around the General Belisarius,
a hero sent to reclaim the lost lands of the Western Roman Empire by
the Emperor Justinian.

The
Last Roman features a new campaign map which is focused almost
entirely on Italy, the north coast of Africa, and Spain. Although
these regions are more detailed here than in the base game, the map
feels disappointingly small, an issue compounded by the fact that the
territory is split between a very small number of large factions.

As
you would expect, there are new units to recruit and technologies to
research, but nothing that’s a great departure from the core game.
What makes The Last Roman unique is choosing to play as the Roman
expedition. It’s essentially the horde mechanic of Attila with the
twist that it’s now the Romans who are the ‘barbarian’
invaders.

And
initially, this twist provides quite an enjoyable experience. You
begin in Africa with two separate camps, and very rapidly find
yourself under threat. But this early struggle to survive and reclaim
land for Justinian sadly doesn’t last very long.

After
a single large land battle, I effectively wiped out all opposition
within the starting region, leaving me free to march from settlement
to settlement, capturing them with zero resistance. And from there,
things only got easier. At points in the campaign I was rewarded with
new forces, free of any upkeep cost for several turns, allowing me to
blitz my way across the map, capturing territory with little effort.

Because
although the factions you’ll be fighting control large areas of
territory, they seem to lack any serious military force. I swept
through Africa and Italy, completing my campaign objectives with only
a handful of serious or challenging engagements. The vast majority of
my time with The Last Roman was spent fighting weak garrisons in
unprotected settlements.

Perhaps
this was a difficulty issue, or perhaps it was simply how this
campaign played out. After all, each campaign will be different. I
could have also chosen not to reclaim land for Justinian, but to
claim it for myself and establish my own faction. But doing so
discards the only truly unique feature that The Last Roman offers –
playing as a Roman horde.

The
same is true of the other major factions, all of which are playable,
although I see no reason to bother. After all, I have the core game
with a far larger map for something like that. No, the only reason to
play this DLC is for the unique experience of the Roman horde, but
sadly it’s something of an underwhelming experience.

In
its favour, when playing as the Roman expedition, The Last Roman does
offer a lot of story based events with choices to make that will
affect your campaign. But there’s nothing here that will radically
alter how things play out – it’s more of a choice between X
increase in Y, or X increase in Z.

There’s
little more I have to say about The Last Roman. Compared to Age of
Charlemagne, it’s a weak piece of content that I couldn’t
recommend, even for the novelty of playing as a Roman horde. Whereas
with AoC I’ve already completed campaigns as three factions and I’m
ready to get stuck into a fourth, I have no desire to revisit TLR
after completing my expedition campaign. Because outside of that, it
offers nothing of note.

Tuesday, 12 January 2016

I had my internet upgraded
last year, which was nice. It meant I no longer had to wait 10-20
hours for a single game to download. It also meant I was finally able
to upload videos. I wasn’t quite sure what sort of videos I should
do. Initially I thought about doing video reviews to accompany my
written reviews, but I don’t have a fancy microphone or editing
software and it seemed like an awful lot of effort for something that
just wasn’t worth the hassle.

Instead, I figured I’d
just upload raw gameplay footage. No fancy editing or commentary,
just pure gameplay. I know when I want to see a new game in action, I
like to just watch raw footage of it without people talking over it
or describing everything they’re doing. So I thought, why not do
just that? It’s also a lot easier and requires far less effort. I
just hit a button, record my footage and upload.

I use NVIDIA ShadowPlay to
record, which isn’t the best in terms of quality, but it works with
everything I’ve tried, keeps the file size fairly low and is nice
and simple to use. Due to a limitation with Windows 7, it splits
recordings at a certain size, which means I have to use the YouTube
video editor to combine and process each part into a complete video.
This further reduces the quality even compared to a regular upload,
but there’s not a lot I can do about that.

I’ve currently got three
playlists of videos on the go with a new one starting soon. I’m not
going to adhere to any kind of upload schedule or anything like that.
I’ll just post stuff as and when I have it/feel like it. And I
won’t post everything I record, only the stuff I think is
interesting to watch for one reason or another.

I haven’t monetised any
of my videos because that’s another hassle I don’t need. Like my
blog is ad free, I don’t want to start worrying about this channel
as some sort of revenue stream. Playing, writing about and now
posting videos of games I enjoy is my hobby and I’d rather it stay
that way. After all, I already have a career. Maybe not a
particularly successful career, but maybe things will turn around
this year.

Thursday, 7 January 2016

It’s a new year for
Suburban Killbot! I can’t say it’ll be a good year, but let’s
hope for the best, eh? I’ve now completed the blog overhaul I
mentioned back in December. It mostly concerns posts between 2012-13.
A lot of my old reviews were split between multiple posts, but I’ve
now merged these into single entries. I’ve also reformatted a lot
of other posts to tidy them up and hopefully corrected any remaining
typos. I think everything is mostly okay now, but I’m sure I’ve
missed one or two things.

I’ve also added Contact
links to the side of the main Blog page, which just makes them more visible
than on their own dedicated page. You’ll notice a YouTube link
which I’ll be doing a post about soon. In terms of other upcoming
posts, I expect to do a writing update this month or in early
February depending on how things go with my current project. I also
have one or two game reviews lined up. I’d also like to do a Top 10 Favourite Games post, but it’s bloody hard picking what titles to
include. I wouldn’t expect that any time soon, if at all.

Speaking of games, it’s
looking like something of a sparse year. A friend gifted me Far Cry 4
in the Steam sale, so I’ve got that to play, but the only thing I
bought for myself was another Attila DLC. There really wasn’t
anything else that interested me too much. In fact, looking ahead,
there’s not much coming out I’m particularly excited about.

There’s Total War:
Warhammer. There’s the new Tomb Raider, I guess. The new Deus Ex.
Oh, and a new Mirror’s Edge which hopefully won’t be shit.
Dishonored 2? Is that 2016? Yeah. I guess I can always do some more
retro reviews or something.